


Harry

by TheMewsAtTen



Series: Tomorrow [6]
Category: God's Own Country, God's Own Country (2017)
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Introvert Johnny, M/M, Smut, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 21:48:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15894792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMewsAtTen/pseuds/TheMewsAtTen
Summary: This is the sixth and final instalment of the 'Tomorrow' series. I really hope you enjoy it.I've basically gone all-out on the fluff, so be warned. I am in no way apologetic about this.Thank you so much to everyone who sent lovely messages, comments etc on the whole series encouraging me to finish it - I probably wouldn't have done so without that encouragement and I'm deeply grateful. GOC has a lot of lovely fans. I definitely plan to write more in this fandom.The song lyric quoted towards the end is from 'A Groovy Kind of Love' by Phil Collins. It came on the radio at one point while I was writing and it sort of stuck in my head!As always, these characters are not mine, no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended - I just write out of enthusiasm and love for them!You can find me on tumblr at TheMewsAtTen if that's your bag.





	Harry

_Johnny shouldered the frame of the gate, trudging squelching mud underfoot, cursing as his stomach roiled with nausea. He dropped the unwieldy wooden structure, bent double, spitting to keep from throwing up._

_This had happened before. All of this had. A hundred times before._

_He looked up at the hill just as Gheorghe disappeared over the peak, out of sight._

_Johnny bolted upright. He tried to shout to him, to scream at him to wait, but no sound came out._

_He broke into a run. He ran and ran, cresting the hill over which Gheorghe had just vanished. He ran until his lungs felt fit to burst, but he couldn’t close the space between them._

_Again and again and again, he scaled that same hill. Every time he looked up, Gheorghe, still a hundred yards or so ahead of him no matter what he did, would turn at the top to look at him for a moment, before dropping his head sadly and disappearing._

_The world blurred, then came back into focus._

_Johnny was suddenly in front of the house._

_A storm blew around him, the wind a deafening howl as he bolted through the door, his throat tight, gulping down air but never catching his breath._

_The swirling, surging wind chased him inside, rushing through the house, circling him as he searched for Nan and Dad._

_Dried leaves and dust and dirt lay where the carpets should have been, the curtains threadbare, half-pulled from their rails. Pictures hung lopsided - where they still hung at all. The whole house was as cold as ice and as dark as the shortest day in winter._

_They sat in the living room when he found them, in their usual places, but they were gaunt, almost skeletal, staring at him - through him - with eyes set so deep they looked like they were just sockets._

_Statues._

_“Where is he?” he wheezed at no one in particular._

_The reply was nothing but the groaning of the wind._

_“Where’s he gone?” he screamed this time, into their faces, one by one. But they didn’t shift, sitting there in confused, rigid silence as the leaves blew around them._

_“Who, lad?” Nan answered at last, her voice flat, the leaves blowing into her face, sticking in her hair . . ._

 

 

Johnny’s eyes flew open.

He swallowed thickly, the sight of the off-white, dated Artex of their bedroom ceiling comfortingly familiar. 

Hearing the slide-thud of drawers opening and closing, he turned onto his side to look at Gheorghe.

He lay in silence for a while, listening to the tick of the clock at their bedside, slowly coming back to the real world, watching Gheorghe’s strong, broad back with mute relief as his heart slowed from a race to a thud to a beat.

“You sure your lot are OK staying in town?” he asked eventually, his voice croaky from sleep.

Gheorghe jumped - he hadn’t noticed that Johnny had woken. 

He turned on his heel to face him, the side of his mouth twitching into a smile. “Yes. It is sensible. There is not room for all of us here. And it is important not to change Martin’s routine. And they are . . . _loud_. This is most comfortable for everybody, no?” 

Johnny looked away, unconvinced. 

His head had been pounding with worry about it all. He’d been worried that Gheorghe’s family would feel unwelcome, not being put up at the farm. He’d been worried about the always-vocal few in town who never could take to people they decided ‘weren’t from round ‘ere’. Gheorghe had encountered his fair share of it. More, Johnny suspected, than he’d ever actually told him about. There had been quite a few more jibes and taunts at the auctions since word got round that the Saxby lad was getting married to a bloke - and to one of those Eastern European blokes, at that. Johnny felt the rage stretching at the inside of his ribs just thinking about it . . .

“They will be OK. They will take care of each other,” Gheorghe said, breaking softly into Johnny's growing panic, his expression calm and soothing. “I am going to make you breakfast, you need to eat something.”

Johnny sat up in bed. “Stop fussin’, will you?” he mumbled, fighting a smile.

Johnny pretending to find Gheorghe’s protectiveness irritating had become a bit of a ritual between them.

“No,” Gheorghe answered matter-of-factly. Sweater in hand, he dipped down to kiss Johnny’s temple, running his knuckles over his cheekbone tenderly before strolling out of the room and downstairs.

 

\- - - - - - - - - -

 

Johnny jumped as Nicolae threw his head back and roared again, rich and booming. Gheorghe’s brother-in-law, it turned out, had a laugh that could silence a riot.

Johnny rolled his eyes. The marquee was full of noise and stale smells and people he didn’t recognise who insisted they knew him from here or there. And he _knew_ he should have prised Robyn away ages ago. Nicolae wasn’t exactly fighting her off with a stick, granted - and with his huge biceps and sharp cheekbones and full lips, Johnny had to admit he definitely understood the appeal. But still, Gheorghe’s sister had been looking daggers at Rob for the last half an hour and, after tomorrow, these people would be his in-laws. 

It was a little irritation, really, considering the situation he was in. He knew Rob got flirty when she was tipsy. She was infamous for it. Everyone who knew her knew it meant bugger all; that it never came to anything. If it hadn’t been approachable, talkative Nicolae she’d sunk her teeth into it would have been someone else. But Ioana didn’t know that. All _she_ knew was that there was an attractive younger woman laughing boisterously at every cheesy joke her husband cracked in his broken English, and she looked like she was losing patience even faster than Rob was downing drinks . . . 

Johnny groaned internally, shifting awkwardly where he sat and trying really hard not to make eye contact with anyone. He knew folk meant well, but he wasn’t sure he could get through another conversation, answering the same questions about him and Gheorghe again and again. 

He’d genuinely had no idea just how mental people went over weddings. He was glad he hadn’t known when he’d asked Gheorghe to marry him, or he would have dragged him off and got it done somewhere as far away from everyone they both knew as possible.

_Too late for that now_ , he thought sourly . . . 

Rallying himself, getting ready to pry Rob from Nicolae with his bare hands if he had to, he took a moment to do what his Dad had told him to, to help get him through it all. He’d told him to remember _why_ he was doing it, what it was all for - for him and Gheorghe. Only the thought of finally being able to call Gheorghe his husband, to offer him all the security that brought with it, had kept him from totally flipping out already. He’d been seconds away from going into a sulk so massive it would make his past ones look tame when Nan’s talk had started to involve parties, cakes and marquees . . . 

Bloody parties. Johnny had known from the get-go that today was going to be a wall-to-wall nightmare.

This party the day before the wedding had been a trade-off, really. Nan had known, without needing to be told, that Johnny would want their wedding to be small and quiet, just as she’d known Gheorghe would go along with that plan for his sake. But the thought of Gheorghe’s relatives coming over for anything less than a ‘proper do’ had deeply offended her sense of Yorkshire hospitality. 

“I’ll not have them going back home thinkin’ we’re rude beggars wi’ no manners,” she’d said, “if they’ll not have a big wedding to look forward to we’ll have to do _summat_ to make them feel welcome.” 

So she’d insisted that the least they could do was have a small do for Gheorghe’s family at the farm - and she’d made Gheorghe promise to suggest it to his mother.

Ana had agreed so loudly when Gheorghe called home to Romania that he’d hardly needed the phone at all. Before long, his grandmother, mother, two sisters, brother-in-law, niece and nephew all had plane tickets booked. 

It had come as no surprise to find out that Gheorghe was the quiet one in his family. What _had_ come as a surprise was learning that someone so silent, so wordless, could emerge from a family with so much energy and volume.

“No wonder . . . lad’s so quiet,” Dad had said when they’d all gone back to the town after their first visit to the farm a few days earlier, “can’t . . . get a word in edgeways.”

It certainly wasn’t what the Saxbys were used to. 

Of course, what had started as an extended family do in the farmhouse had grown arms and legs. Nan would invite someone she ran into in town. Then she’d reason afterwards that she _had_ to invite their sister or neighbour or third cousin or word would get around and offence would be taken. By the time Johnny had invited Rob, and Rob had said she was going to bring her mother and sister _and_ her nephew Harry so he could play with little Iosif and Odeta, Johnny had realised the whole thing had gone completely rogue. It was then he’d decided that letting Nan do it her way was a matter of survival.

He didn’t mind, not really. Johnny had wanted Rob there. He’d realised with a sense of shock that he really _needed_ her there. She and Gheorghe were his armour in these situations. At least she was when she wasn’t flirting with married blokes . . . 

When she cackled loudly again from the corner at something Nicolae had said, Johnny took his cue. Gheorghe was off somewhere - probably helping Nan like he had been nearly all day. Panicking at the thought of it all kicking off and Gheorghe not being there to defuse the situation with his sister if it got out of hand, Johnny stood abruptly, pacing away towards the house, calling to Rob as casually as he could manage over his shoulder. 

At least, he’d been _going_ for casual. His voice actually came out in a bark, causing several folk to look up in curiosity.

Rob threw him a quizzical look, apparently a bit pissed off to be called away from whatever it was she’d been discussing with Nicolae, but following behind him when he made it clear he wasn’t going to double back.

She caught up to him as he approached the house, giggling breathlessly, a bottle of beer still clutched in her dainty hand.

“What’s the matter wi’ you, happy?” she asked drily as she walked alongside him.

Johnny stopped at the garden at the front of the house. Gheorghe had done it up for Nan and Dad not long ago, and it had grown in so perfectly it looked like it had been there as long as the land. Johnny loved it in a way he couldn’t possibly describe; loved to sit in it and feel like he was surrounded by Gheorghe, and by something he’d done for the Saxbys for no other reason than love. On a summer night like this, when it could stay light till nearly midnight and the smells of the flowers lifted in the easing heat of the day, it was one of his favourite places.

“Fuck’s sake, Rob, you’re all over him, wind it in, yeah?” he hissed, collapsing onto the wooden bench.

“Who? Nicolae?! Give over, we’re just talkin’,” Rob scoffed, lighting a cigarette.

“Aye, well Ioana looks like she’s gonna lose it and I could do without you and Gheorghe’s sister having a go the day before . . .  just pack it in, yeah?”

“Sorry,” she said, throwing herself down on the bench next to him, resting her head on his shoulder, “can’t be windin’ up your _in-laws_ , can we?”

“Don’t start,” Johnny grumped, blushing. “Anyway, you’re meant to be mindin’ your nephew, remember? The three year old you brought here wi’ you?” he elbowed her as she swigged from her beer bottle, scowling. “Where is he, anyway, has Nan still got him?”

Nan had been in her element all day with the kids, giving them little jobs to do, letting them fetch cutlery and lick mixing bowls. Johnny had tried to think how long it must have been since she’d had kids around. The thought had made him sad and anxious, so he’d shaken it off.

Robyn smirked at him wickedly, pointing into the distance, slightly away from the marquee.

Johnny followed the line of her finger.

His stomach swooped, his chest swelling at the sight of Gheorghe standing in the middle of the field ahead of them. He was carrying little Harry on his hip, Iosif and Odeta running in rings around them. He was talking to Harry, pulling exaggerated faces and pointing things out in the distance. The kid looked absolutely engrossed, listening to Gheorghe speak, occasionally trying to poke him in the ear with a lollipop stick. 

Johnny thought for a moment that if he didn’t already love Gheorghe to distraction, seeing him right there, just the way he was with those kids, smiling and relaxed and happy, would have sealed the deal. He felt dizzy, blindsided by a heady mix of terror and uncontrollable love.

Gheorghe turned to face the house, coaxing Harry to wave with him when he spotted Johnny and Rob sitting on the bench. Johnny waved back, his jaw-aching smile mirroring Harry’s beaming little giggle.

He turned back to look at Rob. She shook her head incredulously, her face still plastered with a mischievous grin.

“What?” Johnny demanded.

“You are so fucked it’s unreal,” she chuckled before stubbing out her cigarette, lifting her half empty beer bottle and staggering gently towards Gheorghe and the kids.

_\- - - - - - - - - -_

 

Johnny had left Gheorghe packing the family into taxis back into the town. He was still worried about not offering to have them stay at the farm, but if this evening had proved anything it was that it wouldn’t have worked out. Everything about them was sprawling, and it seemed to be in their nature to fill space.

Gheorghe, not for the first time, had been right. 

Johnny felt deflated; empty of energy for other people. Parties did that to him. _People_ did that to him. He knew the only other human he’d have the strength for until morning now would be Gheorghe - because Gheorghe didn’t demand strength. He was as easy to be with as it was to be alone. 

Johnny sat slumped in the barn, knowing no-one but he or Gheorghe would come here, the silence making his ears ring with the echoes of the day’s noise. 

He didn’t jump when he heard the creak of the door. He knew it would be Gheorghe.

“Did everyone get off OK?” he asked into the black invisibility of the barn’s dark edge.

“Everything is fine. Are you OK?” Gheorghe answered gently, moving into the light.

“Aye. Just been a lot of talking and that. Busy day, like. Was just . . .”

“You needed some space. Some quiet, yes?” he asked softly, leaning against the nearest beam, “you want me to leave you longer?”

Johnny stood, moving towards Gheorghe, taking him in his arms when he reached him, breathing in his scent like it was air. “No. Don’t.”

Gheorghe touched his lips to Johnny’s earlobe. “I know what you need,” he mumbled.

 

\- - - - - - - - - -

 

Gheorghe lifted Johnny’s leg onto the edge of the bath, pressing a kiss to his ankle. Johnny’s eyes filled with tears at the sweetness of it. He blew cigarette smoke upwards to try to hide them, even though he knew Gheorghe had spotted that trick before and would know what he was doing. Gheorghe knew when Johnny was hiding tears.

Johnny had long since come to realise that there were things that Gheorghe did to tell him that he wanted to fuck, but that he didn’t mind if they didn’t. Johnny had noticed things like that, had collected them like little gifts, squirrelling them away with care. The way Gheorghe could spend twenty minutes just kissing bits of him without ever expecting it to go anywhere. The way he seemed quite happy to just kiss Johnny to sleep, or hold his hand while they watched the news together. 

Johnny still couldn’t quite understand why anyone would want to do that for him; to give him affection like that, all for its own sake. It had brought waves of feeling out of him, something stronger and more completely raw than anything he’d known he could feel. 

Gheorghe had made him say soppy things _during_ sex, too. Not things he said to get what he wanted, but things that were truly, deeply _meant_. He’d still be embarrassed about letting them out afterwards, would never want to talk about them, but it would always happen again the next time, and the time after that.

He stared for a moment at those chocolate brown eyes as Gheorghe’s lips found the delicate skin of his ankle, again and again.

“Nearly had to hose Rob off your Nicolae tonight,” he slurred casually.

Gheorghe huffed a laugh. “Ioana tells him when she is not happy with him. I am sure she will speak to Nicolae about this later,” he smiled ruefully. 

“Rob don’t mean owt by it,” Johnny sighed.

“I do not think it is Robyn she is not happy with.”

Johnny smiled, a little relieved that Ioana probably _wouldn’t_ be out for Rob’s blood at the wedding tomorrow. He breathed deeply as he watched the light reflecting off the expanses of Gheorghe’s skin.

“You could’ve done better than me, y’know,” he blurted suddenly.

“You are feeling sorry for yourself,” Gheorghe observed, still kissing that same spot, looking into Johnny’s eyes.

“Fuck off,” Johnny snorted, dragging deeply on the cigarette they were sharing, like they always did. “Are you . . . are you happy?”

Gheorghe smiled his contented, easy smile, nodding. “Something is bothering you.”

Johnny looked away. “I’ll hate meself if I can’t make you happy.”

“You already make me happy.”

Johnny chewed anxiously on his thumbnail.

Gheorghe stroked his wrist soothingly. “Look, we will not _always_ be happy. Sometimes tired. Sometimes angry; bored. Sometimes there will be no money. I will marry you tomorrow because I want us to be those things together, yes? I do not expect you to make me happy all of the time. I do not think that I will make _you_ happy all of the time. A life together is not always happy.”

He traced a wet finger in circles on Johnny’s inner thigh. Johnny watched the droplets roll down his skin. He looked up at Gheorghe and felt the coiling, licking heat of desire in his belly.

“Come on,” he growled, putting out their cigarette. “I wanna go to bed.”

“You are tired?” Gheorghe asked slowly as Johnny suddenly stood up, bath water cascading down his legs. Johnny towelled himself quickly, pulling on the pants he’d left on the bathroom floor earlier. He looked straight at Gheorghe, his gaze serious.

“No,” he answered simply, grinning and walking out.

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

Johnny pulled the towel from around Gheorghe’s waist, running the pads of his thumbs over the warm, soft skin of his hips. Gheorghe fingered the waistband of his pants. The lightness of his touch tickled, and Johnny giggled.

Gheorghe ran a thumb over Johnny’s cheekbone. “Beautiful,” he mouthed, pulling Johnny into a kiss, wet and moaning and dirty.

Johnny wrestled Gheorghe onto the bed, feeling his laugh move through their bodies in comforting vibrations.

Their bodies slid together, the kiss of skin taking all of their attention and concentration, the friction a delicious relief.

Johnny thought about their first times, the exploring and the discovery of textures and rhythms, the way they’d found their way to a fitting together that seemed to bring them closer and closer every time. Johnny wondered how he’d ever managed to settle for just getting off when it was possible to have this kind of closeness - to be in love right down to the marrow of your bones.

They rutted together in the bed they shared, Gheorghe swallowing down a moan as he came in hot pulses over their stomachs. Johnny _loved_ this. The heat and stickiness of Gheorghe’s release; the mess, even the smell and the taste. Things that had disgusted him with casual shags were the things he loved because they were part of Gheorghe, part of what they were together.

It only took another few seconds before Johnny was whimpering into Gheorghe’s shoulder, slumping on top of him, his toes curling, his hands balled into fists as he came.

“Fuck,” panted Johnny, laughing breathlessly as he moved off Gheorghe, stopping to clean them up haphazardly before coming to lay alongside him.

Gheorghe smiled drowsily, lifting Johnny’s hand to his lips to kiss it before pressing the palm to his own cheek.

“Your family are dead nice,” Johnny said through a yawn.

“They like you.”

Johnny wondered whether that was true. He knew Gheorghe would lie about something like that to protect his feelings. 

“Have you . . . you ever thought about it . . . about a family, like?”

“Children?” Gheorghe asked quietly after a pause.

“Aye.”

“Maybe. Maybe one day.”

Johnny fidgeted, short of breath, feeling like someone was gripping his heart with one fist and his head with the other.

“You are worried about this?” Gheorghe asked.

Johnny chewed at his thumbnail. “You’re good wi’ kids. I’m not. I’d be a shite dad, me.”

Gheorghe held Johnny’s face, forcing him to look into his eyes. “Hey, this is not true. You are kind and you work hard and you protect your family. And . . . you do not need to worry about this now.”

“Aye . . . but that’s what happens, in’t it? The order, like. Folk get married, then they have kids . . .” Johnny sighed.

“John, we are us. We are not ‘folk’. It does not matter to me if you decide you do not want children. I am marrying _you,_ yes? We do not _have_ to do anything. We do not _have_ to marry or have children. We only must do what we want to do. You are . . . you are worrying about everything at the same time.”

Johnny blushed furiously, his hands trembling with the shock of the truth that he was sharing in spite of himself. 

“Aye, but, see, I liked . . . seeing you wi’ Harry, earlier. I’ve never felt like that before. It was only a minute but, it caught me on the hop a bit, like. And I think it’s what I want. Just . . . I wanna be sure. Me Mam rushed into it all that and look what happened . . .”

Gheorghe pressed his nose to John’s, nuzzling gently. “Listen to me. We do not have to worry about this now. It is a big day tomorrow. There will be a time to think about this. But remember, _you_ must choose. You do not have to do anything just to make me happy. I am already happy, yes?”

“I . . . I’m in love wi’ you,’ Johnny exhaled shakily. “Just . . . want you to remember it tomorrow, if stuff gets a bit much, if I start being all arsey and that. Know I’m not great wi’ folk, I can be a mardy beggar when things get a bit much. So I want you to remember that, if you get pissed off wi’ me. See, all this . . . the farm, getting the house in order and sorting meself out . . . us getting wed. Thing is, I can do it all, but none of it means fuck all if you ain’t happy.”

The radio played quietly in the background. Another thing he’d learned about Gheorghe, another little gift - he couldn’t sleep in perfect silence. Johnny realised he recognised the song that was playing, the lyric he’d heard loads of times before; ‘when I’m in your arms, nothing seems to matter, my whole world could shatter, I don’t care’. He thought again about the daft, romantic things he said in bed to Gheorghe. He cringed inwardly at himself that even cheesy song lyrics had started to make sense in this completely unexpected happiness he’d found.

Johnny wasn’t going to tell anyone how terrified he was of tomorrow, least of all Gheorghe. As he dozed off to sleep, two thoughts crossed his mind. The first was that he really hoped he didn’t have that same fucking horrible nightmare yet again tonight. The second, that he didn’t really mind being terrified of tomorrow if Gheorghe was there waiting for him.

 

 


End file.
